This one looks good (and a lot more hygenic).
Just remember that anything that requires a person in severe time pressure to take some physical action could be used as gamesmanship to either distract the player or to make the player use up additional time to react. If the peace flag is not removed then the player who placed it can claim that the opponent put it there if it wasn’t removed by the opponent.
The two-hand motion does not require the opponent to physically do something to reject it, does not stay hanging around to confuse the issue as to who actually placed it, and can be a non-required addition to a draw offer. If it is required then a person in severe time pressure is made to spend additional time to even make a draw offer.
Do you mean to say that the correct response to your proposed hand gesture offering a draw would not be a resulting hand or other physical gesture? Surely you “gest”.
I was suggesting the flag thing with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek.
The problem with any physical gesture is that this would require the person in time trouble to look at his opponent and away from the board or clock. This too could be used in a gamesmanship manner.
Tipping the King over is a physical way to show a resignation. But it is not mandatory or even necessary.
Let’s face it, having any physical gesture be mandatory in offering a draw is fraught with problems in the game itself.
Sometimes there is a responding hand gesture, but it is not always one that is appropriate in a room with mixed company or youngsters…
No one ever said the gesture should be mandatory. The point was to come up with a way of proposing a draw that avoided verbal miscommunication. If you like, you can say “Draw?” and make the gesture at the same time. Your opponent may not know what the word “draw” means, but ey will hear your voice and know to look at you (most tournament chess players are not hearing-impaired, and those who are will be more likely to notice when someone is signing). Also, unlike a handshake, the “equal” gesture has no alternative interpretation in the game context.
Even though the peace flag suggestion was made “tongue in cheek” I like it better than the prospect of trying to remove a nasty old red ring from a king in the same time pressure. The peace flag being viciously swatted down in a millisecond would send an unmistakable message to the player raising it.
25 posts of solutions looking for a problem.
99 problems but a queen ain’t one.
Thank you, Jay Z…
Um, I am vaguely familiary with the FIDE rule, but can someone point out the USCF rule that requires a draw offer be notated? 20C states draw offers may be notated, it does not require them. (As in, recording a draw offer should not be interpreted as ‘making notes’ on a scoresheet.) Or, unless I’m missing on some other rule, one would likewise be obligated to record clock times.
(For that matter, although not the recommended procedure, the rulebook does address making draw offers before determination - and recording - as well as during opponent’s move. Not the preferred procedure, but such offers are valid. In fact, I know of few players who determine and then offer a draw. And most players respond by requiring the move to be determined… hopefully having considered that there is no immediate checkmate present.)
Part 3, Chess Notation, makes no mention of recording draw offers at all, but does state that equals indicates promotion. Not that I wouldn’t allow the other interpretation as common sense.
Is communicating a draw offer NON-verbally a desirable option?
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Such an offer is valid in the sense that the opponent may accept the offer, and the player may not withdraw the offer until the opponent declines, either verbally or by touching a piece. However, a draw offer made after the player has pressed his clock is highly improper, as the player is disturbing an opponent whose clock is running. Such behavior can be penalized, at the TD’s discretion, especially if the opponent complains. (A minute or two added to the opponent’s time sounds about right.)
As for making a draw offer without yet moving, that’s really no big deal. All the opponent has to do is say, “make your move first”, or just sit there and let the player’s clock run until he moves. After the player finally moves, the opponent still has the right to accept the offer, which is on the table until the opponent touches a piece.
Bill Smythe
No, because there is no such rule.
All true. Maybe the penalty would be higher if you grabbed the King Ring on the opponent’s move. (Anybody else think of all the scholastic players making infantile jokes about grabbing the King’s Ring… and all the disorder that would be caused when the TD can’t keep his or her face straight in the wake of that? 
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At a tournament that I directed last weekend, Black offered a draw and told his opponent that his draw offer would remain in effect for the rest of the game. Several moves later, after White allowed Black to exchange queens and go into a winning king and pawn ending, Black informed his opponent that he was revoking his draw offer. White objected, and Black asked me to resolve the dispute. I ruled that there is nothing in USCF rules that allows a player to make a standing offer of a draw. Once the opponent declined the offer, either orally or by deliberately touching a piece, the draw offer was no longer in effect.
With a “king ring” it would simply have been a matter of Black removing the ring from his king. Under current rules, though, there is no such thing as a “king ring”, either real or implied.
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Yup. This is yet another anecdote about a bad draw offer situation and outcome that the king ring (or equivalent) would have prevented.
The current rules and conventions lead to the anecdotes we all hear where one player complains about being “bothered” by the other who speaks too often to offer a draw.
A king ring would eliminate that common problem too.
A player deserves a way to politely and properly make a continuing draw offer for as long as he wants, in a non-bothersome way. But in practice the current rule denies him that.
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Or, equally, it shows why standing draw offers are an inherently bad idea, both as a rule and to chess in general, and the rules are correct that a draw offer begins upon a claim or offer and lasts through the other player determining a move.
I’d much rather rule on several multiple-claim-annoyance claims than one claim of, “I took off the ring!” “Not until I was reaching for it!”, or “He stole my ring and it wasn’t on my king!”, or have someone get a broken finger in a both-players-grab for an object. Not to mention rewriting touch-move to allow the possibility of removing a ‘king ring.’
Standing draw offers aren’t really necessary. In the game played last weekend, for example, after Black offered a draw in the queen vs. queen ending there was no need for him to say that it was a standing offer. He’d already made it clear that he was satisfied with a draw in that position, and as long as the position remained relatively unchanged it was up to White to make the next draw offer, which would probably have been accepted. Once White changed the position by offering the exchange of queens all bets were off.
Bob correctly resolved the incident by correctly applying the rules of chess (substantially the same on this topic for both FIDE and USCF).
Still more posts of solutions looking for problems . . .